World Cup 2026: Furia Roja

And there we have it: another World Cup in the bag, another name etched on the trophy, and another star on Spain's shirt. Every World Cup is a good one, even when the play is crap and the hosts are dodgy, so I'll leave other minds to reflect on whether this was a good tournament or not.

I suppose the only thing that I'll say in that direction is that the US remains a great venue for the World Cup. The size and diversity of the population are big enough that you can almost always fill a stadium, and  they're up for a party. I didn't get to any of the public parties down in San Jose, but when I did watch matches at pubs, there was always interest and full houses.

As for the game itself, it was a bit of a grim spectacle, watching Argentina resorting to playing dirty in an attempt to stop Spain from swamping them. I suppose they can't all be like 2022, when Argentina went up 2-0 in the first half, France equalized by the 81st minute, and then the game ended at 3-3 after extra time and Argentina won on penalties. But it's a pretty damning statistic that Argentina managed just two shots in the 120 minutes of game time, and no shots on target. That may indicate that Spain's superior midfield strangled Argentina's ability to link up play and bring Messi in, but Argentina also picked up 25 fouls (to Spain's 21) and 7 yellow cards, one of which led to a red card, compared with none for Spain.

It doesn't feel like a great final display for Messi, does it?

The other statistic is that this final cements 2026 as a particular over-performance by Western European teams, especially the EU5 (of whom only four were present). Western European teams picked up 2.13 points per game against teams from the rest of the world, the highest since 2006 (2.59); EU5 teams won 2.33 points per game, versus 2.67 in 2006.

Western European teams had it all their own way against almost every other region: they played 6 games against teams from CONCACAF and won all six, and won all three of their matches against Eastern European teams (they also have a perfect record against Oceania, but since they met just once, when Belgium played New Zealand, I'm not counting that). Their record against teams from Asia was more mixed, with 5 wins and 4 draws, but even there they didn't lose a single match. A Western European team did lose a match against a team from Africa (Scotland v Morocco), but won 10 of the other 16 matches against African opposition (I'm counting games won on penalties as draws, otherwise Morocco would have also notched a victory against the Netherlands).

Ironically, CONMEBOL was the confederation against which the teams from Western Europe had the worst record. Of 12 matches played, the South Americans won 5 and the Western Europeans won 4, with 3 draws. But when it counted the most, Spain came through and beat Argentina, which notched the most wins against Western European teams throughout the competition.

I've spoken before about the power of networks, and the fact that the core countries of England, Germany, Italy and Spain benefit from having the best leagues (and France from having players who play in those leagues). This result, and the good performance by these core countries, just shows how crucial that networking is to success in the World Cup.

The other notable thing from this result is that this is the first time a UEFA team has won a World Cup in North America. The previous editions were won by Brazil and Argentina in Mexico (1970 and 1986) and by Brazil in 1994 (USA), and always against European teams (Italy, West Germany and Italy). I always held that up as proof of the difficulty of traveling - until 2014 no UEFA team had won in the Americas, and both World Cups held in Asia were won by CONMEBOL teams (Brazil in 2002, Argentina in 2022). The only outlier was Spain's win in South Africa in 2010, but you could argue that that tournament represented less jet lag for Europe. That said, now that UEFA teams have won in South America and North America, this jinx against traveling can probably be consigned to history.

As a final thought, I want to come back to the point I made above about the US (and Mexico and Canada) being a great venue to host the World Cup. I don't have many memories of the 1994 tournament, apart from the disappointment of the final, but I kept thinking about the 1998 edition, which was the first I watched in its entirety. Like this one, I started out watching it on Telemundo, since I didn't have access to ESPN in my dorm that year. MLS was still relatively new, having only started a couple of years before thanks to the boost soccer got in the US from the 1994 tournament.

What a difference 28 years makes. MLS isn't considered a great league by any means, but it seems to have benefited from becoming a destination for European players who wanted to play without being seen to take a huge payout from China or Saudi Arabia. The arrival of David Beckham in 2007 helped raise the league's profile, and the game's, among US sports fans, and the arrival of Messi in 2023 (at a team co-owned by Beckham) raised it even further.

Here's an example: during Argentina's first match this tournament, against Algeria, I heard the Chinese family downstairs from me cheering Messi's hat trick, and it struck me that in 1998, no one in America would have recognized the game's most high-profile player or cared that he was playing. Yet that night we had Kansas City hosting the world champions and a bunch of fans there specifically to see Messi play, and more people tuning in to see him on TV.

I guess it makes me happy to think that 1994, which was derided as a cash grab at the time, did have far-reaching effects that still resonate. Without that tournament, MLS would probably never have been formed, certainly not with so much backing as it received, which would have given the US men's team access to fewer players and fewer academy facilities to develop them and send them to learn their trade abroad. You can trace the decent performance of the USMNT this year directly to their success and the excitement around USA 1994.

It also has to be said that the Women's World Cup contributed a lot to raising the profile of the game here. When it was held here in 1999, it became another opportunity for normal sports viewers to see the world gathered in the US to play together, and the fact that the USWNT won must also have helped - US fans could say that the men weren't up to the standards of the best, but the women were the best. That excitement was replicated in 2019, when the games were all over TV here in the US, despite the tournament being played in France. It helped that, once again, the US fielded a great team that looked like they were playing for each other.

So the success of this World Cup is due to 1994 and 1999, as well as 2002 when the men got to the quarterfinals and 2019 when the women won and turned it into a platform for advocating against Trump. It leaves me wondering how this year's edition will affect the game, both here in the US and abroad - next month normal US sports fans will go back to ignoring whatever's happening outside our borders, but they may carry the images and fun of this tournament with them for a long time, leading to more interest in future tournaments and more demand for games here.

It'd even be fun to see the US men win a World Cup - just once, though. I'd like to see another Italy win someday soon, or even just a qualification. But that's a dream that'll have to wait four years.

World Cup 2026: On to the Quarterfinals

Today's the first day without football since the World Cup started, so I took the opportunity to catch my breath and work on some of the stats for the tournament so far. The main thing is how rampant European teams were in the round of 16: the only UEFA team to exit at this stage was Portugal, which was knocked out by another UEFA team (Spain). All of the other European teams knocked out their opponents and progressed to the quarterfinals, which means the count stands at 8 UEFA teams, one CONMEBOL team (Argentina) and one African team (Morocco).

On the stats side, that means that UEFA teams so far lead the tournament with 1.81 points per game, having overtaken CONMEBOL with 1.74. The irony is that European teams have fared the worst against South American teams at this tournament, having lost three matches against them. In comparison, the only other confederation to have notched a win against a Western European team has been Africa, when Morocco beat Scotland in the group stage, but otherwise Western European teams have racked up 9 wins against African teams.

Teams from Western Europe have, so far, picked up 2.14 points per game against teams from the rest of the world, including Eastern Europe, which is the highest points-per-game since 2006, when Germany hosted and the entire continent had home field advantage. The average points-per-game across the tournaments from 2002 to 2022 is 1.88, so teams from Western Europe are doing historically well.

Part of that is how limited the other teams have been. Not to be mean, but the three hosts, all CONCACAF teams, got found out in this round just gone. Canada wasn't knocked out by a European team, but they were taken apart fairly convincingly by Morocco, who are just a win against France away from reaching their second semifinal in a row. Mexico gave the best go of it, but home field advantage, altitude and storm-related delays couldn't paper over the fact that England's individual players are just better.

And then there's the USMNT's performance against Belgium, which has been discussed at length by everybody, so I'll spare you for the moment. But regardless of off-field shenanigans and whether or not certain politicians' actions fired up Belgium while unsettling the US, that game was simply another case of a team of better individual players winning against spirited but limited opposition.

That point about good individual players bears repeating, because we're seeing it reflected in the race for the golden boot. I don't think I've ever seen the most heralded players showing up the way they have this year, but Lionel Messi is on 8, Kylian Mbappé and Erling Braut Haaland are on 7 each and Harry Kane is on 6 - and all four players could add to those totals. Messi and Mbappé both roared past Miroslav Klose's record, and now they're both a couple of good games away from matching or passing Just Fontaine's record for scoring 13 goals at a single World Cup.

By the way, as a digression, I was sorry to see Klose's record get eclipsed like that. There was something endearing about the idea that the top scorer in men's World Cups was a relatively unknown German (of Polish ancestry) who was never a household name like Messi or Pelé. On the other hand, now I'm curious to see if Harry Kane will manage to pass Klose, and whether Haaland will manage to add to his tally in the next World Cup in 2030.

But coming back to my point about the best players showing up for this tournament: those four leading the goal rankings right now were all expected to perform, and so far all of them has. You might argue that Cristiano Ronaldo has disappointed, but I'd argue that he over performed, given how limited his play has become; same with Neymar Jr. for Brazil.

There have been disappointments from big teams, of course. Without mentioning Italy's failure to qualify, Uruguay should have gotten more from their group, and Germany should have beaten both Ecuador and Paraguay. Brazil also seemed like they might come good, but then couldn't cope with Haaland or with the rest of Norway's movement. But other than Germany losing to Paraguay on penalties, there haven't been any shocks - the big teams mostly showed up and the unheralded teams have tended to over perform (in the case of Cape Verde) or at least give a decent account of themselves.

That might be because of the venue. The US, where most of the games are played, is diverse enough that you can fill a stadium with fans from pretty much any country in the world, just from that country's diaspora - the Iran games played in LA were apparently pretty lively, for example. Even if only 0.01% of the US population hails from somewhere like Ghana, that still means about 35,000 fans to liven up games and watch parties.

With that kind of support, you expect all teams will do well. The question will be whether this 48-team format will hold up in the next few cycles. 2030's going to be weird, with games in Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, Spain, Portugal and Morocco, while 2034 will be weird in the other extreme, as it'll feature Saudi Arabia as the sole host. While 2030 will have opportunities for lots of fans to travel, it likely won't have that diversity that the current tournament has brought.

That point about diversity brings me back to the US's exit, for a brief political coda to this blog post. Donald Trump can't have it both ways: he can't claim credit for an admittedly successful tournament while also demanding that the US be only white and English-speaking. Whereas 2006 was a nice showcase for Germany's inclusiveness and openness, 2026 feels like a success in spite of the US's government and general attitude toward the rest of the world. Trump's interference, and Gianni Infantino's acquiescence, have spoiled that a bit, but my hope is that the remaining fans who have traveled to the tournament will still have a good time and be able to take home stories of how welcoming the US was, regardless of who's in the White House.

The US is doing its damnedest to cut itself off from its friends, and when crisis hits, as inevitably it must when we've got a shitty government like this, the hope will be that enough goodwill remains from the rest of the world to get through it. A fun World Cup should help toward rebuilding bridges that this administration has insisted on burning.

World Cup 2026: The First Big Shocks of the Tournament

I was going to continue with another post on the underlying stats by region for this World Cup, but events got out from under me a little on Sunday, when I tried to fill out my spreadsheet, and then things... started happening yesterday.

So I'm going to start with Germany's exit against Paraguay, which should feel seismic - or would if Germany hadn't done worse in the last two tournaments. The BBC and Guardian seem to have made a big deal of Germany losing on penalties for the first time, which admittedly is interesting, but I'm more intrigued by what's going on around the team and the football association back home, the DFB.

The sense I got as the tournament started was that no one expected much out of this team. The qualifiers were disjointed, with repeated changes in tactics and lineups leading to some bad performances. More to the point, as the Guardian's pre-tournament guide said, the team lacked the individual quality of previous Germany teams - there were no outstanding defenders or keepers as of old (pun kind of intended, more on this anon), no midfield playmaker, just a good attack... albeit one that isn't coming off a good season.

As for that keeper... a lot of ink has been spilled about Cristiano Ronaldo insisting on still being in the Portugal starting XI, but Manuel Neuer has also seemed to be past his sell-by date, if not quite as bad as CR7. One of the controversies before the World Cup started was that head coach Julian Nagelsmann had recalled Neuer, at the age of 40, over the more recently established Oliver Baumann. I subsequently learned that Baumann didn't have a good season either, but the fact remains that recalling Neuer has to have been disruptive for the rest of the team.

All this makes me think of is Raphael Honigstein's 2015 book, Das Reboot, which talked about how the DFB retooled its approach to academy training and recruitment to kick on from the doldrums of the 90s and win the 2014 World Cup. Unfortunately, whatever they did hasn't stuck, because Germany's performances in the World Cup have been dismal ever since, and in the European Championships they haven't been notably better, either - it boggles the mind that the work of several decades, in a rich country with a strong football culture, should fall apart so quickly. If I'm being brutally honest, that's the book I'd like to see - how Germany got from 2014 to now despite all its manifest advantages.

By comparison, the Netherlands losing on penalties to Morocco feels a lot less seismic. A friend relayed that the Athletic or some other outlet had tipped the Dutch to win, and I greeted this with skepticism: in the past you could never rule out the Germans, but you can always, always rule out the Dutch. More than that, apparently the Dutch are abysmal at penalties, so when last night's match ended 1-1 after 120 minutes, I knew what was coming.

Though I should toot my own horn a bit and point out that I had Morocco beating the Netherlands in my Bracketology on the Guardian website. Given how well Morocco did in 2022, and in this year's group stage, I figured they had a chance... more of one than Paraguay, but then, that's why they play the games.

Stat Block

Turning to the stats for a moment, the overall trend from the group stage has continued, with CONMEBOL teams earning 1.85 points per game at the top of the ranking, and Asian teams winning just 0.64 points per game at the bottom. UEFA remains in second place, with 1.72 after yesterday's matches, though if Western Europe were its own confederation, it would have 1.94.

Meanwhile, the Big 5 European teams present (England, France, Germany and Spain) have won 2.42 points per game. To put that in perspective, Arsenal won the Premier League in the season just gone with 2.23 points per game, and we have to go back to the 2021-22 season, when Manchester City won with 93 points, to get a higher points-per-game tally (2.45).

All this is to say, I still think the winner of the tournament will be a team that's won it before, which leaves England, France and Spain on the European side, and Argentina and Brazil on the South American side. Of the European teams, France looks the strongest, while Argentina looks stronger than Brazil to me - so my Bracketology selection has a repeat of the 2022 final in which Argentina beat France.

Though with Argentina facing tournament underdog darlings Cabo Verde on Friday, who knows what'll happen?

World Cup 2026: Western Europe Dominates the Stats

Now that all the teams have played once, it's time for a little stats roundup, Francis-style. Last time around, I built on an idea floated in Soccernomics, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, that showed that national teams from Western Europe dominated the Men's World Cup (I added that qualifier because I'm sure they do well in the Women's World Cup too, but I haven't crunched those numbers yet).

In short, Soccernomics noted that Western Europe was so strong that no Western European team lost against a team from the rest of the world (including Eastern Europe) in the 2006 World Cup. I then counted up the results from the subsequent tournaments (and from 2002, for completeness), and found that the signal is still there, if less pronounced. In short, teams from Western Europe won, on average, 66.7% of their matches against teams from the rest of the world, with draws counting as half a win (which follows Soccernomics' methodology).

2006 was the highest, with an 89.7% record against ROW (rest of world), or 2.59 points per game. 2002, held in South Korea and Japan, was the lowest with 59.1% against ROW and 1.64 points per game. 2022 was the next lowest, with 59.4% wins against ROW and 1.66 points per game.

So how does 2026 stack up so far, with each team having played once?

As of now, Western Europe's record against ROW is 79.2%, or 2.17 points per game, making it the second-highest average since 2006. Although there have been a couple of surprises, like Spain's draw with Cape Verde and the Netherlands' draw with Japan, no team from Western Europe has yet lost a match. This is likely to change as the tournament goes on, especially since Austria has yet to face Argentina and Scotland has yet to face Brazil - and based on Argentina's performance against Algeria the other night, we can expect them to encounter more Western European teams as the tournament goes on.

There are two other ways to slice this data. I decided to do a league-style table for each confederation participating in this tournament, which for once is all six, and this is how the points per match shake out:

1. UEFA: 1.69
2. CONMEBOL: 1.33
3. Asia: 1.22
4. CONCACAF: 1.17
5. Africa: 1.11
6. OFC: 1.00

UEFA's number includes four teams from Eastern Europe, but if you separate the two regions in UEFA, the picture is stark:

1. Western Europe: 2.17
2. Eastern Europe: 0.25

This mismatch is due to Czechia, Turkey and Croatia all losing their opening games, while Bosnia-Herzegovina drew against Canada, whereas no Western European team has lost a match yet.

The other way to look at this data is to split out the so-called EU5: England, France, Germany, Spain and, er, Italy, who aren't here. But even with just four teams in the tournament, the EU5's points-per-game record is even better:

1. EU5: 2.50

As Kuper and Szymanski argue in Soccernomics, Western Europe's chief advantage is in being at the center of the world's football networks. The world's best players and best coaches converge there, particularly in those nation's club tournaments, exchanging knowledge every time someone moves from one team or league to another. One example is Pep Guardiola, who's just left his position as Manchester City manager: he brought the style of football he learned at Barcelona first to Bayern Munich and then to City, and by the end of his tenure in England, pundits noted that even teams down in the lower divisions were setting up with goalkeepers controlling distribution from the back of the pitch.

The system is self-sustaining, because the most money and the most visibility is in Western Europe, and particularly the EU5 leagues. Unfortunately, it doesn't export well, because - apart from leagues that distort the economics, like MLS, the Saudi Pro-League and, previously, the Chinese league - the best paychecks are still in Western Europe.

That said, there are now more cases of players returning to South America after a stint in Europe, such as Neymar - though he doesn't feel as culturally omnipresent as he was in his time in Europe, when he'd cameo in movies like XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. Action-movie cameos aside, Neymar likely went home to Brazil to get game time in a different environment than Paris or Barcelona, and it's paid off in that he was selected for the national team this tournament.

Though it feels more important for the longer-term development of the game outside Europe that Brazil selected an Italian, Carlo Ancelotti, as its coach for the tournament. Ancelotti isn't necessarily a theoretician the way Guardiola or Austria's coach Ralf Rangnick are, but his decades of experience winning the Champions League should provide a different perspective in how to set up to win a tournament. The question will be how well Brazil does under him, and whether the experience he brings will take root longer term.

There's more to be said about coaches with European experience filtering out into the rest of the world, but Round 2 of the group stage, featuring Czechia vs South Africa, has just started, so I'll leave those thoughts for another post. But I'll be interested to see how these numbers, particularly Eastern Europe's, change over the next two rounds, and over the tournament as a whole.

World Cup 2026: Every Time I Think I'm Out

I may have talked about it on this blog, but my enthusiasm for this year's World Cup felt a shade more muted than it has in previous years. Some of it was the political backdrop, in which the tournament seems like it'll be used for propaganda purposes by the Trump administration; some of it was the corruption of FIFA; and some was the lack of cheap tickets, coupled with my reduced buying power and the lack of fun matches near me at Levi's Stadium. It also didn't help that Italy has once again failed to qualify.

I didn't think I'd skip it, God forbid, but I sort of figured I'd be a lot more relaxed about it than previous years: maybe I'd focus on the most important games, or the most intriguing. I'd be there for the final, for sure, but there might be some groups I'd completely forego in the interest of sanity and maintaining a reasonable schedule.

Fast forward to Sunday, June 14th, my fourth straight day of watching as many matches as possible. As I type this, I'm sitting in front of the TV and splitting my attention between this blog and Sweden v Tunisia. In case you don't understand what this says about my sickness, it's a match-up between possibly the most boring European team (other than Switzerland) and the most boring African team. 

Yesterday I had a game in the background or in the foreground from noon (when I was at a friend's house for a barbecue) until past 11pm, when the day's fourth game ended. My day today started, not with the gym as it normally does, but at the local German pub to watch Germany's 7-1 demolition of the unfortunate Curaçao. I had a dark moment this morning when I realized that there would be 3-4 matches every day until early July, which means I'm going to be in front of the TV for a giant amount of that time.

Goodbye, productivity. Hello, spreadsheets about Western Europe's record against the rest of the world at the World Cup (expect a full blog post on that topic at the end of the tournament). My podcast-listening will consist exclusively of World Cup daily rundowns for the foreseeable future... and I still haven't finished yesterday's episodes of Totally Football and Football Weekly.

Now, before you think I'm totally World Cup-addled, I should note that I missed two matches in their entirety today: Netherlands v Japan, which apparently was a cracker, and Côte d'Ivoire v Ecuador, which didn't promise to be a cracker. Though I should say, the only reason I didn't watch them is that I was spending time first with my stepdad and then with my writing group. Which is to say, if I have better things to do, preferably with other humans, I will do those things instead of parking myself in front of the TV.

But also, yeah, if I don't have plans, I'm totally gonna watch Uzbekistan v Colombia on Wednesday night... when else am I going to get to see how the tactical nous of Italy legend Fabio Cannavaro deals with the free-flowing football of James Rodriguez and Yerry Mina?

On a more serious note, this World Cup is just as absorbing a spectacle as it usually is. On the pitch, some of the matches have been as entertaining as you might hope, with the USA's game against Paraguay being a good example. And if Germany hammering Curaçao 7-1 felt a little cruel, that brief moment when the minnows had equalized against the four-time world champions was a validation of the promise of the World Cup: maybe not that any team can beat any other team, but that any team can spring a surprise.

Off the pitch, the US is quietly getting excited about the World Cup, with a bunch of promotions from the likes of DoorDash and McDonald's livening things up. There's a good number of soccer-related ads at half-time (and on Fox, during the hydration breaks that bisect each half), and while many feature David Beckham, a pretty good amount also feature USMNT star Christian Pulisic. And of course, social media is awash with stories of Europeans coming to the US and encountering the outsize plates of American casual dining restaurants, as well as the outsized capacity of Americans, at their best, to welcome strangers to their country. 

That last part is the most important. We're in a particularly ugly period in American politics, as evidenced by the fact that the US launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, another participant in this tournament, and has denied entry to several of the Iranian team's staff. There was widespread worry that the matches would form the opportunity for ICE to deport a bunch of people, and we've been treated to the unedifying spectacle for about 18 months of US officials saying that of course everyone is welcome to attend... as long as they go home immediately afterwards.

FIFA likes to trumpet how football unites the world, to the point that it's become a meaningless cliche. And I'm not naive enough to suggest that taking a German dude to eat brisket tacos will save NATO or bring about world peace. But given how negative a view the rest of the world has developed of us, it's good for Europeans to come here and see that individual people are still welcoming and up for a laugh, even in places that overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2024.

As I finish up this blog, another miracle has occurred, which is that Sweden has just spanked Tunisia 5-1. As noted, I have no horse in this race, but it's pleasing to see that a team I considered stodgy and unimaginative found it in themselves to break down a team that revels in negative football. This might be another outlier into which I shouldn't read too much significance, but coming on the heels of Germany 7-1 Curaçao and Netherlands 2-2 Japan, it's good to see free-scoring football, at least for the moment.

Every World Cup summer is a good one, and if the games are anything to go by, this year won't be an exception. The fact that the party is here on our doorstep and it's inviting in not just the world, but also the rest of America, hopefully will make it even better.

WTF Italy

I wasn't following these Nations League matches very closely, but I feel compelled to share this one, because of the general WTF-ness of the whole situation. The second German goal has made the rounds on the news and podcasts, because of the absolute insanity of the Italian team getting so caught up in their own BS that they get taken by surprise by Germany's quickly taken corner.

While Italy's second-half fightback can be taken as a positive, you have to ask whether they'd have mustered up the courage to do it if they hadn't let in that comedy goal. Apparently Donnarumma's a good goalkeeper, but I feel like I rarely see it, and he certainly doesn't demonstrate a lot of tactical nous here.

Moise Kean seems like the goal threat that Italy's needed for years (you know, since about 2018), but again, he's had a weird career and I think he's had fewer call-ups to the national team because of his skin color. He certainly doesn't seem to have had a good time of it at big teams like Juventus.

This just all makes me think of the shocking displays Italy's graced us with at World Cups since winning in 2006, as well as the incredible collapse at last year's Euros. If Italy keeps letting in goals like this, how do they expect to qualify for 2026?

Though, on the other hand, maybe they're just getting a jump on being banned from entering the US next year...

England Presses the Tuchel Button

Well, at least it wasn't Frank Lampard.

I was intrigued when the FA announced that Thomas Tuchel would be the next England manager. I admit I don't know a lot about him, but I also wasn't expecting them to go for a foreigner again. I don't think it's a bad appointment, but it raises a few questions, which I'll be interested to see answered as he takes the reins.

The tenor of the reports I read today talked about his clashes with upper management at his previous clubs. This was confirmed by a perusal of his Wikipedia page, which cites acrimonious departures at almost every club he managed (a notable exception being Mainz). That doesn't seem too big a problem at clubs like Paris St. Germain or Chelsea, which have reputations for sacking managers, or at Bayern Munich, since he was the first coach in 11 seasons not to win the Bundesliga (though he won it in the first of his two seasons in Munich). On the other hand, the fact that he left so many clubs in the same circumstances should give the FA pause - particularly since the manner of his departure is a reason why Manchester United decided not to hire him during the summer.

Then there's the fact that Tuchel also rubs players the wrong way. He had issues with certain players at Chelsea and Bayern, and had a bit of a reputation for being an authoritarian at other clubs too. Speaking as absolutely not an expert, the England job seems like it depends more on man-management than tactical nous, so this is really the aspect that concerns me about Tuchel's appointment.

Fabio Capello was brought in partly to impose some discipline on the England squad after the antics at the 2006 World Cup, in which the WAGs' sideshow contributed to this feeling of the players being more concerned with celebrity and endorsements than playing for their country. Early reports spoke glowingly of Capello's rule that players had to wear suits to team dinners. On the other hand, the football at the 2010 World Cup was disappointing, and Capello left two years later amid a dispute with the FA over John Terry losing the captaincy because of his alleged racist abuse of Anton Ferdinand.

My other question about this appointment isn't about Tuchel's ability, but rather about the FA finding the courage to appoint a foreigner for the first time in 12 years. That phrasing should indicate how I feel about them appointing a non-English coach - both Capello and Sven-Göran Eriksson had excellent records, even if they never won trophies or got as far in tournaments as Gareth Southgate did. I expect that Tuchel should do well, if he doesn't set everything on fire before the next international break - he is, after all, a league winner in both Germany and France, and a Champions League winner with Chelsea.

However, the fact that the FA opted for a foreign coach this time shows how few decent English coaches are left. I've banged on about this a few times over the years, so I'll just rehash my points quickly by noting how odd it is that an Englishman hasn't won the top flight in England since 1991, and that a British manager hasn't done so since 2013. The best jobs seem to go to buzzy, fashionable foreigners while English managers get stuck on the carousel of diminishing returns that starts with the clubs outside the notional top six (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Spurs) and ends with Everton or West Brom or something.

The last English manager to get a top 6 club on merit was Graham Potter at Chelsea, and he didn't have a good time of it. He was then replaced by Frank Lampard, who isn't considered a very good manager but still walks into these roles because he was a famous player. Either would have been a bit underwhelming if they'd gotten the job instead of Tuchel. Not that Southgate inspired dancing in the streets when the FA appointed him in 2016.

The way I see it, Thomas Tuchel will either be a masterstroke, bringing home a World Cup or Euro... or he'll be a disaster. He won't bed in long enough to get boring, a point that the Guardian's Football Weekly made today, but it'll be one of those other two extremes. Indeed, given his track record of making friends and influencing people, I feel there's even an outside chance that Tuchel breaks all the china before the 2026 World Cup. At any rate, if he doesn't win that, I don't expect him to still be there for Euro 2028.

Either way, I appreciate the FA's willingness to look beyond the tired carousel of English underachievers for an actually decent tactician. I'm looking forward to seeing how Tuchel does, and maybe, hopefully, this appointment gives English managers a kick up the arse and we'll see more of them gaining experience abroad.

RIP Sven Göran Eriksson

My post about the Beckham doc on Netflix talked about a weird time, so it's fitting that I run this post, about the recently passed former England manager, Sven Göran Eriksson, since he was a big part of why that was such a weird time.

I was listening to the Guardian's Football Weekly today, which led off with some tributes to Sven, as he was known during his time here. Some of it was fair, talking about his rise from obscurity in Sweden to managing in Portugal and Italy, and then getting hired for the England job on the strength of his time at Benfica and Lazio. They also talked about his record as England manager (three quarterfinal exits in a row, in 2002, 2004 and 2006), and on the tabloid obsession with Sven's personal life.

I thought some of their comments missed the point, btw. Max Rushden and co were right to point out that the Sun and other tabloids' relentless reporting on Sven's affairs was a bit much, but they also didn't mention that Eriksson was in a relationship with Nancy Dell'Olio while the tabloids were reporting on his various affairs. Indeed, one of the guys on the podcast said Eriksson wasn't hurting anyone with his affairs, but surely he was hurting Dell'Olio?

Sven's time as England manager is also a little confusing in hindsight. It's held up as a period of drift, because the expectations at those three tournaments were high, especially in 2006, when a lot of England fans expected to win. Mars bars were even briefly rebranded "Believe" bars, because presumably that would fire up the fans. 

But the football turned out to be slow and ponderous, and not at all the kind of play you'd expect to win a tournament with. I even remember sitting through the first half of England's opening match against Paraguay, which was settled by a Paraguayan own goal in the fourth minute, and when the half ended and they returned to Gary Lineker and the Match of the Day team in the studio, they all looked embarrassed at having to talk up such a performance. As I recall, England's tournament didn't really improve, and my abiding memory of their exit against Portugal, even more so than Cristiano Ronaldo winding up Wayne Rooney, is both Rooney and Beckham throwing tear-filled tantrums as the game slipped out of their control.

(I also remember having to be careful about the big grin on my face as I took the train home from my friend Ian's house. Not, I should add, because of England's elimination, but because Brazil had been eliminated by France in the earlier match, which made me quite happy back then. But that's by the by)

The 2006 World Cup is remembered more for the Wags (wives and girlfriends) and their antics in Baden-Baden, where the England team was based, than for anything the men did on the pitch. It was held up as a symbol of moral decline, in which the players (chiefly Beckham) were more interested in celebrity and partying, and of Eriksson's dangerous indulgence. Indeed, the 2010 World Cup, where England were coached by Fabio Capello, was promised to be a much more buttoned-up England camp, though they actually went out earlier than they had in 2006.

I was among many who tut-tutted at the Wags' antics in 2006 (although now my writing playlist features a song by Girls Aloud, a member of whom is Cheryl, one of the chief Wags, so I've clearly changed in the intervening 18 years). Though if you consider it, Sven's England achieved an impressive level of consistency, certainly more so than the three tournaments before or after.

England had three different managers at Euro 96 (Terry Venables), World Cup 98 (Glenn Hoddle) and Euro 2000 (Kevin Keegan). The exits were at, respectively, the semi-finals, round of 16, and group stage. If we go back to World Cup 94, England didn't even qualify.

After Sven's departure in 2006, the roll call is even bleaker: failed to qualify for Euro 2008 (Steve McClaren), round of 16 in World Cup 2010 (Capello), and quarterfinals in Euro 2012 (Roy Hodgson). We can also take Hodgson on his own, since he was the first England manager after Sven to hold the post for three tournaments, and he didn't exactly cover himself in glory either, with a group stage exit at the 2014 World Cup and then the humiliating defeat to Iceland in 2016.

You can look at this from several angles. One is that England didn't know how good they had it when Sven was their manager. Certainly he and Capello are among England's most successful managers, in terms of win percentages, even if both served up some pretty dour performances on the pitch.

But that's what's frustrating about Sven's time as England manager: he had an arguably more talented group than Gareth Southgate had for his four tournaments, and got less out of them. The Football Weekly guys said something about good man-management by Sven, which is attested by the players, who all seemed to deliver stirring eulogies this week; but I also remember that the England team was riven by cliques, with the Manchester United and Liverpool, and later Chelsea, contingents not talking to one another. I'd say that Gareth Southgate was better at getting the whole squad to play for each other.

Still, I have some mixed feelings about Sven, because I appreciated that his bookish demeanor riled up the tabloids, who'd probably rather have lost gloriously with Dave Bassett at the helm. And another thing the Football Weekly gang said was, Sven, for all his faults, lived life. Those affairs were a bit distasteful (especially the one with the FA secretary who'd also had an affair with the FA chief executive), but apart from that, he seems to have been a bon vivant.

What's sad is that, overall, Sven's career didn't really hit the heights again after 2006. He managed Manchester City before Abu Dhabi bought it, then a variety of middling to low-level national teams, the lowest of which were China and the Philippines. He also managed Leicester City a couple of seasons before they were promoted back to the Premier League, so, much like his time at Man City, he missed out on the Foxes' big success in 2016.

I've done a bit of criticizing in this post, but overall, I'd say that Sven deserves to be regarded as more than a footnote in the history of England's men's national team. His time in charge coincided with my first stint living in the UK, so the England matches were a big part of my life in those years. Indeed, my favorite Sven game is the 5-1 defeat of Germany in World Cup qualifying in 2001. His tournament teams may not have hit those heights, but he deserves the credit for that result, and for giving England a confidence they hadn't had before.

Netflix's Beckham Documentary is a Weird Snapshot of a Weird Time

I try not to do this, but sometimes I'm just taken with a show and I feel the need to talk about it here, even though I'm not through watching it yet. Add the fact that I had no idea what else to blog about this week, and voila: I want to talk about the David Beckham documentary on Netflix.

I heard about it when it first came out, and gave it a hard pass, because Beckham's a footballer that I made my mind up about years ago, and I've been content not to revisit that opinion. Whenever he comes up in conversation these days, it's usually negative, like the flack he took for shilling for Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup. After years (decades) of playing to the LGBTQ community and presenting himself as an ally, many in that community felt betrayed by that move.

I've also been a little bemused by his whole thing at Inter Miami, not that I knew about the details. Having checked out the ownership section on Inter Miami's Wikipedia page, it looks like he received an option to buy an expansion team when he joined MLS in 2007, which I guess is the same deal the league gave to Lionel Messi when he joined Miami. Nothing too odd, at least without doing full due diligence.

So I was a little surprised when I learned, or was reminded, that the documentary had been directed by Fisher Stevens, who played Hugo on Succession and has made a career for himself as a director of well-regarded documentaries. It came up because I heard Stevens talk about the Beckham doc on Marc Maron's podcast, WTF, in an episode from last year. They talked about the various people Stevens spoke to for the doc, and that's what persuaded me to have a look.

It's authorized by Beckham, which is both good and bad. Good, because Stevens gets access to a lot of people, from Beckham's wife Victoria to former teammates, his parents, and various others. I think what made me want to check it out was the fact that they spoke to Sir Alex Ferguson, which felt like a good get. The bad thing about being authorized is that sometimes it feels a little sanitized - Beckham gets to present himself as he wants, which is his right but is also at the heart of why I'm a little disdainful of him.

On the other hand, the documentary does give Sir Alex a voice throughout, including when it discusses his rift with Beckham. The only person that's clearly thrown under the bus (so far, because I'm partway through the third episode, of four) is Glenn Hoddle, who was the England manager at the 1998 World Cup. That means he was in the hot seat to talk about the red card in the match against Argentina, which Beckham received for kicking out at Diego Simeone. In fact, it's kind of cool that they talked to Simeone about it, and he's quite forthcoming about it.

More than anything, the episodes I've seen have been a nice time capsule back to the 90s and early 2000s, and the football culture that prevailed. There's a lot of archival footage of Beckham from the time, both on the pitch and off it, which takes me back nicely. The music is pretty on-point too, capturing some of the Cool Britannia stuff that was happening around then (see also my love for the Britpop documentary, Live Forever).

There are some things I didn't know, or had forgotten about. For example, that red card against Argentina may have galvanized the whole of England against Beckham, but it was good to be reminded that his sending off didn't actually make them lose the match - they held on for penalties, which is when England came a cropper. Though it wouldn't be the last time the English collectively blamed a single individual for an early exit from a tournament...

It was also interesting to hear directly, from Beckham and Ferguson, about the incident that led to (or at least presaged) Beckham being sold to Real Madrid. I remember hearing about the boot to the face incident in the dressing room, but hadn't read up on how it was Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's boot, or how it was effectively a freak accident when Ferguson kicked a pile of laundry and the boot hit Beckham in the face. I also hadn't known that they'd originally sold him to Barcelona, only for him to ask to go to Real Madrid.

The other thing that was helpful to be reminded of is just how good Beckham actually was on the pitch. My enduring memories of him are missing a penalty against Portugal at Euro 2004 and of his tear-filled tantrum when the same opponents knocked England out of the World Cup two years later. But the documentary, without spending too much time on the intricacies of football, does a good job of showing the ways Beckham could be influential. The prime example is the qualifier against Greece, which Beckham essentially won single-handed (though my abiding memory of that qualifying campaign was the October 2001 demolition of Germany).

I suppose my memories of those years are erased by the unceasing juggernaut of the Messi-Ronaldo rivalry that dominated the 2010s, and by the importance of Wayne Rooney to the English game. Though it's worth noting that Beckham's stardom and ubiquity essentially paved the way for the circus that surrounded Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, as evidenced by the religious ecstasy Beckham provoked in fans when he got to Real Madrid. Rooney, on the other hand, was a creature that the English fans understood better - a chaos agent with a rampaging style similar to that of Paul Gascoigne, who however didn't squander his gift like Gascoigne did.

My memories of Beckham end when he left England, though I had a good laugh at his first couple of seasons as one of Madrid's galacticos, since they didn't win many trophies, being too top-heavy to play well. I do remember when he came to MLS, and how they allowed him to break the salary cap, which has become known as the Beckham rule. I even (vaguely) remember when he went to AC Milan, though I think I didn't know he'd ended his career at Paris St-Germain. I'm looking forward to seeing what the documentary has to say about those years.

Overall, the show isn't perfect, but it's been nice to revisit those years through the lens of Beckham's career. I made a point at the time of ignoring the celebrity stuff he was involved in, thanks to his wife (who I should add was also my favorite Spice Girl), so the hoopla around his wedding and children was new to me. But it all brings me back to those years when I'd first moved to the UK, so it's fun to watch.

Also, the sections where Stevens talks directly to Beckham about his life now are unexpectedly interesting, like the joke about playing football against his son Romeo and threatening to invite his former teammates, like Zidane and Figo and Roberto Carlos, to destroy Romeo and his friends. It's nice to see that will to win is still there, even when it seemed like he was more interested in being a fashion icon.

Euro 2024: And That Makes Four for Spain

So Spain are champions of Europe again, having won their fourth title in this competition. They not only won all seven matches, they did it in a certain amount of style. At least once every match, one of the commentators would say that this is no longer tiki-taka football, but that's a little meaningless, since they last won a tournament with that style of football 12 years ago.

More accurate is that they had the most fluent attack, and the most redoubtable defense. They didn't win ugly, which is considered one of the marks of a quality team - rather, they won beautiful in pretty much all their games, whether it was a 3-0 against a Croatia who matched them for possession and shots; or a 1-0 against an Italy that refused to be broken down until an own goal; or after going down a goal against Georgia, the surprise package of the tournament.

I'm not normally the biggest fan of the Spanish national team, in part because of those tiki-taka tournaments in 2008, 2010 and 2012, and in part because they knocked out Italy in 2008 and 2012, the latter being a particularly brutal 4-0 hammering in the final. I'll admit that part of me was hoping to see a repeat of that today, but since I was watching with an English friend, I think it's better on balance that they kept it to 2-1.

With regard to England, they deserve some props for getting this far. Their record wasn't as spotless as Spain's, and when they won they seemed able only to win ugly. It was surprising to see how disjointed they were in the group stage and the first couple of knockout matches, given that my understanding of Gareth Southgate's tenure is that he's always been good at getting the team all playing for one another.

Still, the players kept faith with his plan, even when they didn't seem to understand it, and they made it to their second Euro final in a row. It helped that two individual moments of brilliance from Jude Bellingham and Harry Kane in the dying minutes of the Slovakia game saved England's tournament. By the end England looked like the team they'd been in previous tournaments, even though it's maybe too much to suggest they were as cohesive a unit as Spain.

Regardless of the result, and of what Gareth Southgate decides to do next, England should be proud of what the team has achieved, and how close they came to matching the women's team's Euro victory in 2022. Getting to two successive finals of a tournament is impressive, and I think it reflects how English and Spanish teams have also dominated the Champions League in the last two decades. It'll be interesting what this team looks like at the World Cup in 2026, and then at the next Euros, which will be held at home in Britain and Ireland.

As for the wider tournament, maybe it's impossible to be wholly objective as to the quality of the football. I'm just always so happy to have a World Cup or a Euro that, even if Portugal were to win with a succession of 1-1 draws and four straight rounds of penalties (which is not too far off from what happened in 2016), I'd still happily watch as much of it as I could. As I noted in previous posts where I calculated goals per game in this tournament compared with the last two, there were more goals and more exciting games, even if there weren't that many surprises or giant-killings.

That last point makes me consider the concept of England "under-achieving" at tournaments since 1966. It's the favorite refrain of England fans and pundits, that somehow the team hasn't achieved the destiny it deserves. But as the authors of Soccernomics say when they tackle this question, winning tournaments is hard. By definition, only one team can win a tournament, and when you have a knockout competition, it comes down to skill and conditioning and heavy helpings of luck.

At least at the Euros, there are about 7-9 teams that you think should get to the quarterfinals every tournament (Germany, Spain, France, Italy, England, the Netherlands, Portugal, and maybe Belgium), which means that by definition, they will all have to face one another. Spain saw off Germany, France and England on their way to the final, after having beaten Italy in the group; England beat the Netherlands and Switzerland (which had knocked out Italy). Both teams can say they faced at least some serious opposition, even if it's true that England made heavier work of facing easier opponents.

The point of all this is, England (or any other big team) can only be said to under-achieve if they don't reach the quarterfinals. After that point, it comes down, as I said, to a whole bunch of variables on the day, which even the most detail-oriented managers can't really account for. So while England should be wistful about what might have been, the fact is they showed themselves to be one of the two best teams in the continent, and should use that as a springboard for future tournaments.

The other thing I've been considering in this tournament has been the number of participants. This is kind of related to the previous point about under-achievement. By its nature, a larger tournament features a larger number of worse teams, but this year in particular, I feel like there were very few teams that were only there to make up the numbers. The evidence for this is that only Poland found itself eliminated after the first two matches, whereas the tournaments that have 16 or 32 participants have many more teams crashing out that early.

Some pundits have suggested that certain games at Euro 2024 were proof that the tournament should go back to only eight teams, never mind 16, but that obscures the runs that Georgia and Turkey went on this year. Not only did they play out a supremely entertaining game among themselves, but both got to the knockouts, and Turkey were clearly good enough to beat an Austrian team that held its own against the Dutch and the French in the group.

If the World Cup and the Euros are festivals of football, it makes sense to invite more teams to enjoy the party. A good run, like Georgia this year or Iceland in 2016, is like a once-in-a-lifetime pleasure for those countries' fans (and it doesn't matter if there aren't many of them), and also nets them money that they wouldn't have access to if they didn't qualify.

Given that the Champions League (as I bang on about ad nauseam) is increasingly the province of a few clubs from just four countries, and in practice really only Spain and England, it's good to see that the Euros are going in the other direction and sharing the wealth a bit, even if the winners still usually come from the same pool of Spain, Germany, France or Italy. Though even here, Portugal, Greece, Denmark and others show how a less accomplished team can put together a decent run.

All this is to say, I'm filled with my customary wistfulness at the end of a tournament. At some level, the quality of the play, or how far Italy gets, is kind of beside the point (though I'd have been in a hell of a better mood if Italy had won today!). The main thing is getting up early to catch ridiculous matches that I wouldn't normally cross the street for; figuring out whose house to watch the big games at, or whether to go to the pub; and the constant roasting between me and my friends who support other teams.

Euro 2024 is now consigned to the ages. It might have featured the most embarrassing Italy performance since 2008, but it was great while it lasted. And now I can look forward to World Cup 2026, which will be here on home soil, and which will hopefully feature Italy for the first time in a generation.

UK Election 2024: Labour's Coming Home

Amid all the Euro 2024 fueled jubilation, I haven't had a chance to comment on last week's election in the UK (or on yesterday's election in France). But ever since the results came in, I've been thinking about the return of the Labour Party to 10 Downing Street, and the parallels with New Labour in 1997. What crystallized it for me was rewatching the Britpop documentary, Live Forever, which is overall a pretty good encapsulation of what was going on back then.

Comparing the results of 1997 with those of 2024, they look pretty similar. Labour had 418 seats then and has 411 now. In both elections the Conservatives are in second and the Liberal Democrats are third, though now the Tories have way fewer seats than in 1997 (121 vs 165) and the Lib Dems have more (72 vs 46). One of the big changes is that there are more parties represented in Westminster now, with the notable ones being Reform and the Greens, neither of which picked up seats in 1997 (Reform didn't exist, but UKIP, its predecessor, was one of a couple of Eurosceptic parties that put candidates forward). The Scottish National Party has a similar number of MPs as it did then, in part because it suffered an electoral wipeout, while Sinn Fein has grown to be the largest Northern Irish party, which would have been unheard of then.

Keir Starmer is from the same wing of Labour as Blair was, specifically the more centrist wing. Like Blair, he came in after a stinging defeat for Labour under a more leftwing leader; though apparently Jeremy Corbyn is a bit further left than Neil Kinnock was. Starmer's also relatively young, though he doesn't give off the same cool-guy vibes Blair did. Not that I've had an opportunity to see lots of Starmer interviews, but it's hard to see him noodling on a guitar or playing head tennis with Kevin Keegan. On the other hand, he did chat to Max Rushden and Barry Glendenning of the Guardian Football Weekly, so there may be a cool bone in his body somewhere.

The cultural moment is very different from 1997, though there are some interesting similarities. The big difference is the sense of exhaustion that's permeated Britain in the last couple of years. The country was hit hard by the pandemic and by Brexit, and by the mess the Tories left. Britain under Margaret Thatcher and John Major was a two-speed economy, with all the growth concentrated in the Southeast and the more industrial regions left behind. Britain under this vintage of Tories has that dynamic, though the hollowing out of anywhere outside London and the Home Counties has just accelerated in the past 30 years, plus it's suffered from austerity since 2010.

To put it another way, Britain before 1997 was just stultifying, where many young people had no option but to go on the dole. Britain up until 2024 hasn't even let them do that, because of the cuts to benefits implemented by the Tories (and to an extent by New Labour before them). Instead, young people have had to leave university in debt because of higher tuition fees, find worse and more cramped flats to live in (all in London, because that's where the jobs all seem to be), and pay for all this with increasingly precarious zero-hours contract jobs that offer no security or chance for advancement. The celebrations feel more muted now, probably because no one has any energy for a proper knees-up.

Culturally, Britain doesn't really feel like it's on the ascendant now, either. Part of that is the nature of the culture industry, and specifically the music industry - there's a reason why the Live Forever documentary is about music rather than sport or art or cinema. 

One side effect of all those young people on the dole was that they had time to make music, so we saw a great flowering of unique artists like Morrissey and the Smiths, Depeche Mode, Erasure, the Cure, New Order and loads more. These artists, who sang in their native accents and didn't try to emulate American mannerisms like some of the more popular singers and bands, so we got the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays, and these gave way to Suede, the Auteurs, and eventually to Blur, Pulp and Oasis. 

Now it seems a lot harder to find the new Morrissey or David Bowie or Robert Smith or Noel Gallagher. I'm sure there are great bands all over Britain, but none of them seems to have broken through to the mainstream or to the US. My suspicion is that Taylor Swift is the most popular artist in Britain right now, even though she's not British herself. 

This isn't to disparage any of the great grime or UK garage bands out there, by the way - Britpop was a lot of things, but it wasn't diverse, and there were precious few non-white faces among all the bands I loved as a teenager. Whereas now you can have someone like Stormzy headlining a stage at Glastonbury. It's just a sign that the culture industry is more fragmented than it was back then.

Of course, the 90s were a strange moment for Britain overall. It wasn't just music, as Live Forever points out, and as John Harris's book The Last Party also stresses (though Harris's book is more focused on music). British cinema was getting exciting, though the only names I can really point to are Danny Boyle and Ewan MacGregor. In art, Damien Hirst was probably the most visible face of an art movement that includes Tracey Emin and was doing all sorts of innovative stuff in the 80s and 90s. Live Forever even goes beyond its musical remit to talk to designer Ozwald Boateng, who was also held to embody the virtues of the UK back then.

Just about the only thing that seems to have the same hold on the British imagination now as it did in 1997 is football. The England team of the 90s benefited from an explosion of funding following the creation of the Premier League, and from a lot of goodwill as the game cleared out the violent hooligans and became something that everyone, notionally, could enjoy. Just as importantly, black players were starting to come through and play regularly for England, better reflecting the cultural and ethnic mix of the country.

The English game of the last few years may not have suffered from violent fans or a European ban like it had in the 80s, but since Gareth Southgate was hired as head coach of the men's national team, results have been a lot better, with England reaching the semifinals of the 2018 World Cup (the first time in any tournament since 1996), then the final of Euro 2020 (the first since 1966), and after a disappointing, but actually on-par quarterfinal exit from the 2022 World Cup, England is currently one of four teams remaining in Euro 2024.

Incidentally, I'm going into this level of detail to record the ongoing savage culture war that's raging over whether Gareth Southgate is a good manager or not. I'll probably go into that in detail in another post, but here it's worth pointing out that Southgate makes for a nice callback to the 90s, because he was in that Euro 96 team that reached the semifinals before losing to Germany (indeed, it was his missed penalty that sank England). You kind of wonder how much that sense of the country being behind the team has permeated how he approaches the job now - certainly London didn't feel as bound by love for the England team during the years that Sven-Göran Eriksson, Fabio Capello or Roy Hodgson managed them.

I suppose, coming back to the Starmer vs Blair theme, that Starmer appealed to football via the Football Weekly podcast because that's the one thing that still ties together a majority of people in Britain, or at least England. Blair could invite Blur and Oasis to policy confabs and No 10 cocktail parties, because they were the biggest bands in Britain and most people knew about them. He could champion British filmmakers and artists because all of them were firing on all cylinders, whereas now Starmer really can only use football to connect with people.

There's also a cynical comment to be made here: with culture so fragmented along lines of ethnicity, race, sexuality, etc, football is the only thing that won't subject Starmer to accusations of favoring one group over another. It sounds a little stupid to say it, until you remember how apoplectic certain subsets of England fans got when the team would take the knee for racial justice in 2021.

In 1996, about a year before Labour won the election, Britain was enthralled by the first tournament on home soil in a generation (remember, the Scots also qualified). The song of the moment was Three Lions, by the Lightning Seeds along with comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, characterized by its chant that "football's coming home". Blair used that slogan on the campaign trail, tying himself into all the cultural strands that the electorate loved.

Three Lions fell out of fashion for a while, but made its comeback in 2018, and has been trotted out at every tournament since then. Just our luck, then, that it's being sung on the terraces in Germany just as, back home in the UK, Labour's coming, at long last, home.

Euro 2024: Let's Hope the Semis Are Shorter Than the Quarterfinals

Well, here we are, three games left to go in this tournament. The quarterfinals panned out pretty much as I predicted (despite my heavy hedging), and now we've got Spain v France and the Netherlands v England.

With regard to the round just ended on Friday, I thought it was fascinating that three of the matches went to extra time, of which two went to penalties. France v Portugal was, as I predicted, a dour old game and not really reflective of the levels of talent on either side. I kind of wonder if Portugal is so hooked on how they won in 2016 (three draws in the group stage, a succession of low-scoring matches in the knockouts) that they feel they have to play each subsequent tournament like that. They certainly played a more swashbuckling game in 2022, but were knocked out in the quarterfinals by Morocco, so maybe they think the way to another trophy is this negativity? It can't only be down to Cristiano Ronaldo dragging them down.

France, meanwhile, seem to be operating on this same strategy. Either that or someone is threatening to kill a family member every time they score a goal from open play? Whatever the cause, the squad I identified as the tournament's strongest has been quite disappointing. Which doesn't seem to have affected their ability to win matches, of course.

Spain v Germany was the pick of the round, as I said last time, and I think the actual game bore that out. Germany was surprisingly physical - or at the very least, channeling the spirit of Harald Schumacher - as Toni Kroos took Pedri out of the game, and tournament, with an absolute leg breaker of a tackle early on. Violence aside, both teams showcased their quality, and it's a little bit of a disappointment for me that Germany's tournament is already over.

England v Switzerland... well, it's an improvement over the last few games for the Three Lions. I've been engaged in increasingly weird arguments over the merits of Gareth Southgate, who I agree is tactically limited, but the fact that he's led the team to a third semifinal in four tournaments speaks for itself. If he goes on to win the tournament, he'll have pretty much the same record as France coach Didier Deschamps, which is an odd thing to consider.

Another interesting point about the England game, as mentioned in the various podcasts I listen to, was the confidence the team had in taking the penalties. Each one of England's penalties went in, a marked change over the Euro 2020 final when Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho all missed (and came in for horrific racist abuse afterwards). That clearly weighed on everyone's minds this time, but not so heavily that they missed any of their spot kicks.

I do think the Netherlands will make it awkward for England, though. They were the only team to win in 90 minutes, keeping a lid on a rambunctious Turkey side that has lit up the tournament (though not as much as Georgia). I should note here that it was hard for me to root for Turkey as underdogs - I don't hold the Armenian Genocide against all Turks like my mom does, but the fact that one of the players, Meri Demiral, celebrated with a rightwing nationalist salute after beating Austria was a concern. In any case, Turkey was the one remaining surprising team, and it figures that their run would have to end eventually.

I still think Spain is the favorite to beat France, and then to beat either the Netherlands or England in the final. They bounced back from the early injury to Pedri and never fell behind against Germany, which implies a healthy amount of guts and tactical nous. There's a possibility that France tries to strangle the game like they did against Portugal, but my suspicion is that Spain's wingers will be too much for the French.

The England-Netherlands game is harder to call, but I suspect the Netherlands will win. They didn't inspire much confidence in the group stage, but their forward line is working better together than England's. The Dutch defense feels a little more dodgy, but with Harry Kane evidently playing through an injury, it's hard to see how England will score much. Sure, they have Bellingham, Foden, Saka and Gordon, but they also have a misfiring Trippier on the left and Declan Rice isn't quite there yet. Though it might be different if Luke Shaw starts in place of Trippier...

Listen, we can go in circles trying to predict this one. I'll leave you instead with an odd stat that came to me as I was driving today, to wit: Spain has won three Euros, France has two, the Netherlands has one, and England has won none. I don't know if that's a royal flush or whatever (I think you can tell I don't play poker), but it struck me as odd that the distribution should fall out that way. We'll know on Wednesday afternoon who's likely to add to their total.

Euro 2024: Life is Meaningless and Full of Pain...

 And on top of that, it is an endless journey through this vale of tears, etc, etc.

I'm not exactly heartbroken that Italy went out at this stage, because if they'd nicked a result against Switzerland, it would have increased the likelihood of a 2012 style humiliation. But it was a tough performance to watch. There was no pressing, not much passing, no midfield worthy of the name. Gianluigi Donnarumma kept Italy in it, and Federico Chiesa valiantly led the otherwise nonexistent line, but apart from them this was abject, even without considering that Italy were the current holders.

Whatever. I can look forward to us not qualifying for the World Cup in two years, and then Euro 2028 after that. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to seeing how Germany, Spain, England and the surprise packages of Austria and Switzerland get on.

Euro 2024: Matchday 2 Brings the Surprises

My last post talked about the lack of surprises, but that was written before all the teams had played one another even once. Now that each team has played two games, I figured it was time to see if any trends could be teased out yet.

The first is that Matchday 1 had the highest number of goals per game since the European Championships switched to this 24-team format. In 2016, teams were evidently cagier than they are now, because there were just 1.83 goals per game. By comparison, 2021 had 2.33 at the same period, and 2024 goes even better with 2.83 goals per game. The difference is 6 goals (28 in 2021 vs 34 in 2024), which comes from the fact that the opening game, Germany vs Scotland, registered five goals for Germany and one for Scotland, whereas one game in the opening match day in 2021 was a goalless draw.

There's a similar increase on Matchday 2 compared with previous tournaments, with 2.25 goals per game in both 2024 and 2021, against 2.08 in 2016. What's interesting there is that represents a decline on the first match day for the two most recent tournaments, but an increase in 2016.

I don't think I've heard anyone mention the amount of goals per game, but I suspect there are a couple of explanations. One is that the new format has made teams more willing to attack: because the four best third-placed teams go through, and goal difference is one of the key criteria for determining which four are considered the best, it creates an incentive for teams to go all-out. 

If that's the explanation, then it would be an example of football's governing bodies successfully pushing teams to play more aggressively. This is notable because previous initiatives included the "golden goal", whereby the first goal in extra time after 90 minutes would be the winning goal, and the "silver goal", where a goal in extra time didn't immediately end the game, but if it were the only goal in that period of extra time, then it would be the winning goal. 

The golden goal was intended to make teams more aggressive, but instead made them more defensive, because they knew that getting caught on the counter-attack would lose them the game, whereas they'd have more control of their own destiny if they held on until the penalty shootout. The silver goal rule was an attempt to soften this, but was soon abandoned because it also led to teams being more defensive.

On the other hand, it could be part of a wider trend in football toward playing a more attacking style. I haven't bothered to crunch the numbers to see how many goals per game have been scored at the World Cup or UEFA Champions League, but I suspect that in the latter case, at least the finals have become less goal-heavy affairs. Since the Champions League is undergoing a format change in the coming season, it may change the goals per game ratio there, but for now it's too early to tell.

The case for the increase being part of a wider change in football is still valid, however. The shift was underway already in 2016, but essentially the Dutch way of playing football, as filtered through the Barcelona academy, has taken over the European game. Given that pretty much all national sides are playing some form of this pressing or gegenpressing game, you don't see too many sides setting out to play ultra-defensive football like Greece in 2004.

Coming back to my comment about fewer surprises, there have now been a few. Romania roared out of nowhere to beat Ukraine 3-0, and then Slovakia beat Belgium 1-0, a result that everybody seems a little desperate to characterize as the biggest upset in Euros history. Some pundits have pointed out that it's such a big upset based on their FIFA rankings, which don't necessarily track as closely to their relative positions in UEFA, or indeed in qualifying for this tournament. But I suppose we can let them have this one.

Turkey vs Georgia wasn't a real shocker, but based on the highlights, it was an extraordinarily entertaining match. Group B in general was also rather entertaining in Matchday 2, though I was a little less enthused by Italy getting dominated so much by Spain. My first impression was that Italy set out to play for a draw, given that both had won their previous games and being on 4 points after the first two matches essentially guarantees getting to the knockout rounds. However, none of the pundits I listen to on Football Weekly or Totally Football suggested that, rather that Italy was so dominated by Spain that it's surprising the match ended only 1-0 (and that was an own goal).

Speaking of own goals, the podcasts have been talking a lot about how many there have been so far in the tournament. There have, indeed, been 6 so far, compared with 5 at this point in 2021 and 2 in 2016 (which were also the only own-goals in the group stage that year). I think this also stems from the tendency of teams to play more aggressively, which means more action in front of the goal face and more possibility for errors like Rüdiger's goal for Scotland or Calafiore's goal for Spain.

I seem to recall someone in a past tournament mentioning that it might have something to do with player tiredness, which sounds pretty likely, given how many games per season the top players are in. The third match day in 2021 featured 3 own goals, so it'll be interesting to see if that trend continues this year, or if the teams will be more cagey as they seek to secure their spots in the last 16.

None of the matchups in Matchday 3 strike me as classics in the making, but I'll obviously be watching Italy-Croatia very closely, hoping for a good result. On the one hand, I don't know that Italy has a great record against Croatia, but on the other, Croatia doesn't have a great record at the Euros. But after a string of decent performances, including winning the damn thing last time out, it'd be really disappointing to have Italy crash out at the group stage, like in 2004.

As far as winners for the whole thing, now that I've seen the teams in action, I think Germany and Spain are the teams that are playing the best. I haven't done the permutations to see if they'd meet before the final, but based on their form so far, whichever of them wins is likely to win the whole thing. France has been a bit disappointing, given that I thought (and still think) that they came into the tournament with the strongest squad, man-for-man, of any teams. England may still find their feet, but it seems a little less likely - I'm rather a big fan of Gareth Southgate and how he's finally gotten them all pulling in the same direction, but the match against Serbia felt a little bereft of ideas. That said, I think there was a lot of the same chat after England's 0-0 with Scotland last time out, and they ended up getting to the final.

As a final thought, it's a little early to tell who might go further than expected. The Euros, like any tournament, are dominated by the big teams, but not as much as the World Cup, and Portugal were the latest kind of unfancied side to win it, in 2016. I think a Greece-style upset is off the menu, though, because we haven't seen a big giant-killing performance like their group-stage win against Spain. 

At any rate, it's interesting that, going into the final round of group matches, only Poland has been definitely eliminated. This comes back to the point about teams going for it, since they can lose a game or draw all three and still progress. Here's hoping that Matchday 3 will be as good as what we've had so far!

Euro 2024: No Surprises, But A Couple of Early Alarms

It's back!

My second favorite tournament, the UEFA European Championships, have finally kicked off again. For the next month, I have a veritable feast of football awaiting me. I'm as giddy as Alan Partridge:

This means, of course, a bit of a respite from the usual superhero comics nonsense I've been posting here lately (unless something comes up). Instead, as I do every two years, I'll be doing a roundup of interesting thoughts from the most recent round of games. There will probably be stats and puns and ill-thought-out political commentary (also because, lucky us, the UK will hold its general election on July 4, smack dab in the middle of the tournament). So let's dive right in.

Overall, as I said in the title, there have been few surprises in the tournament so far. Just about every team that you'd expect to win has beaten its opponents, apart from Denmark, which led for most of its match against Slovenia, only to concede on 77 minutes. So far, that's the only draw we've had, but I'm sure before the group stage is out we'll have at least one dour 0-0.

Of the surprises that we have seen, they've fallen into two categories. The first is how dominant certain teams have been, specifically Germany and Spain. Germany in particular launched itself out of the starting block to thrash Scotland 5-1. Indeed, so hapless was Scotland in attack that their goal was scored by a German player who deflected into his own net. The talk before the tournament had been that Germany probably weren't ready, and no one knew where their goals were going to come from. 

Well, the answer is that if Germany weren't ready before Friday's curtain-raiser, they certainly are now. And as for goals, the answer is that everyone's going to pitch in: all of Germany's five goals were scored by different players across their attack. This may not hold up as they get further into the tournament, especially as they encounter stiffer resistance than Scotland, but it's a good basis to build upon.

A word for the Scots: I may have said Scotland was hapless, but the picture may become clearer as we go on. Did the scoreline reflect how good the Germans were, how bad the Scots were, or was it just a perfect storm? I'd like to think that Scotland haven't fielded a team of complete no-hopers, given that they beat Spain in qualifying.

Speaking of Spain, they were also more dominant against Croatia than I'd have expected. Croatia seems never to run out of batteries, given that their main players have 368 caps between them (Modric, Perisic, Brozovic), and indeed they bettered Spain's passing and possession. But despite that, Spain scored three unanswered goals, which puts them in pole position in the group and makes Croatia's task of qualifying as one of the better third-placed teams that much harder. Like with Germany, the scoreline was a bit of a surprise, and the big question is how they will cope with stronger opposition in the knockout stages.

The other kind of surprise is the freak goals scored by the weaker/losing teams. Slovenia's has to count as the most influential of those, since it gave them the tournament's only draw so far. But the most notable surprise goal has to be Albania's against Italy, scored just 23 seconds into the game.

The consensus on Football Weekly and Totally Football is that the Albanians scored too early, which gave Italy time to get back into the game and win it. While that narrative is quite similar to the Euro 2020 final, in which England scored early only for Italy to equalize and then win on penalties, it obscures that in yesterday's game against Albania the Italians went ahead 15 minutes later, and the game trundled on at 2-1 for Italy until the final whistle.

My usual worry with Italy is that we never know which version of the team will show up. Three years ago, they set out their stall with a 3-0 demolition of Turkey (whom everyone had designated dark horses that could nick a result), while in 2008 Italy demonstrated their prowess as reigning World Cup champions by losing with an abject 3-0 to the Netherlands. Yesterday's performance against Albania was somewhere between those two extremes, but edging toward the positive side, since they won.

Another team that made heavy weather of their opening win was, of course, England. Jude Bellingham scored the game's only goal in the 13th minute, and the remaining 77 minutes (plus injury time) saw Serbia mount attack after attack on the English goal, only to miss quite badly every time. England didn't look that together in attack either, though, which will be worrying for their fans as they contemplate the knockout stages.

That seems to be my most enduring refrain, but in fairness, this is still only the first round of group fixtures, and we haven't seen every team play yet. Germany has set out its stall as the team to beat, and it'll be interesting to see if they can maintain that momentum as they go on, but the party atmosphere - everyone's very consciously trying to recreate the joy of the 2006 World Cup - should help the home team. Spain has an exciting young team and should qualify with ease, though I'd still like them to lose to Italy.

In terms of teams we haven't seen play yet, I'm most intrigued by France and Portugal. France has, to my mind, the strongest squad, man-for-man, than anyone else at Euro 2024. They face Austria first, which could be tricky, but, all things being equal, I expect France to roll over the hapless Poland and the less hapless but not convincing Netherlands.

Portugal, on the other hand, have a mixture of old stalwarts (Cristiano Ronaldo, Pepe) and newer players, and it'll be interesting to see how they gel. Their group consists of Turkey, Georgia and the Czech Republic, which isn't easy per se, but is also not any kind of "group of death". I expect Portugal to qualify relatively easily, even if they have to repeat their feat from 2016 and qualify in third after drawing all three matches.

I'm also a bit interested to see how Belgium get on. They're in a group of meh, rather than a group of death, but they're also in a bit of a transitional phase, as their old golden generation falls away and is replaced by younger players who aren't quite as heralded, at least as yet. I expect them to get through fairly easily, with Ukraine joining them.

I won't be watching quite every match, since some start at 6am and others will interfere with work. But I aim to catch as many noon games as I can, aided by my new subscription to Sling TV for the duration. If you're looking for a streaming package to catch the games, it's the best overall option, even if it doesn't have five matches that will be exclusive to FuboTV. Those Fubo-exclusives tend to feature smaller teams, and the majority are at 6am (pacific time, at any rate), so I didn't bother.

In any case, this is always a fun time of year, and I'm hoping for a good tournament. If Italy don't win (which would be nice!) then I want to see some exciting, classic matches. Luckily, the Euros are usually good for that. Roll on the next four weeks!

RIP Franz Beckenbauer

The big news in football this week was the passing of legendary German sweeper Franz Beckenbauer, at the age of 78. Much was made of the fact that he was one of only three men to win the World Cup as both a player and a manager, as well as the fact that another of those men, Brazil's Mario Zagallo, also died this week. That leaves Didier Deschamps, who accomplished the feat with France, as the only man still living who's managed it, though the question is whether he can be the first World Cup-winning player to win it more than once as a manager...

Another point that came up in the various testimonials to Beckenbauer on the podcasts I listen to was that he's one of those players that you heard about, but didn't really ever get to see in action. Beckenbauer's heyday was Euro 1972 and the 1974 World Cup, both of which West Germany won under his tutelage, but there's little good YouTube footage of those tournaments, so it's hard to get a sense of how great he was.

This is a problem with all players before about 2006 - even someone like Matt LeTissier, who does have some good reels of famous goals from the 90s, is ill-served by poor-quality transfers to digital. Of course, YouTube highlights aren't always the best way to see players at the peak of their powers, but it seems a shame to lose documentary evidence of them, especially since all that seems to exist of the 1930s World Cups is the odd picture here and there.

On the more negative side, there was also a lot of talk on the podcasts about Beckenbauer's involvement in some of the shadier aspects of winning the 2006 World Cup for Germany. This is too bad on several fronts: on the one hand, it's unfortunate that part of his legacy is tarnished that way, and on the other, that tournament is considered the first great coming-out party for Germany as it is now, dynamic and open and friendly, and so it's equally a shame that an event that brought so much joy to so many people is tarnished that way.

But then, there was also the absurd side, as I learned on Football Weekly. He apparently chose a phone number consisting of all 6'es after appearing on an ad for O2, and this led to him getting a bunch of calls from men who thought they were calling a sex line. Of course, as the host of FW, Max Rushden, said, imagine calling a phone sex line only to find yourself talking to one of German football's greatest players?

I think the most interesting thing I learned, though, was how Beckenbauer seems to have embodied the new (West) Germany. He was born in 1945, amid the wreckage of the Second World War, and his fortunes followed those of his country, so that he came of age as it became one of the richest countries in Europe, and as Bayern Munich became one of Europe's elite too. He was considered a national hero, and despite the damage to his reputation from those FIFA issues mentioned above, it's sad to see him leave the stage.

RIP Pele

No sooner do I publish a blog talking about who's the greatest player of all time, than I have to revisit this question because Pelé, one of the game's greatest players ever, has passed away. There was some preparation for this one, because it was announced during the World Cup that he was moving to palliative care for his cancer. He'd been ill for a while, unfortunately, but it was heartening to see, after that announcement, that he held on and communicated to the fans that he was still hanging on. So as I say, it wasn't too much of a surprise that he did then pass away, though of course it's still desperately sad to see one of the greats of the game departing.

In my previous post, talking about who was the greatest player of all time, I talked about how Pelé was the most visible figure even to people who didn't know anything about football. The way I phrased it might have sounded like I had some hipster alternative for the game's greatest player, but I don't want it to be taken dismissively: after all, Pelé was known outside of football because he was a breakout star who symbolized the game and the glamor and romance of the World Cup. In that respect, he's probably even more influential than my pick for most influential, Johan Cruyff.

I also have to confess that I didn't really have much of a sense of Pelé the player because he retired long before I started following the game. I learned about him when I did, of course, even as early as 1994, but unlike Diego Maradona, Pelé came before I was able to hear about relatives in Italy raving about him. Not only that, but some of his game footage doesn't exist anymore, if it ever did: like the very first batch of Dr Who episodes, a lot of those games have been lost forever.

Yet when I did get to see what was there, I couldn't deny it was amazing. One afternoon, for example, I caught the movie of the 1970 World Cup at my grandma's house back in 1998 or 1999, and was transfixed. Along with his teammates, he entertained and played to the crowds while winning possibly the greatest tournament ever.

Since Pelé's passing, I've read a few articles and listened to a few podcasts about his legacy. I think the thing that's stuck with me most from those is how he was seen in the global struggle for civil rights. Specifically, the Guardian compared him to Muhammad Ali, although unlike Ali, Pelé seems to have been in some ways more ambivalent about his place as a symbol. They pointed out that he certainly wasn't outspoken about Brazil's military government, though he later regretted his silence on that topic.

I can't speak to that, especially given the controversies around the Qatar World Cup or the 1978 Argentina World Cup, which I'm reading about currently in a book about Argentine football (Angels with Dirty Faces, by Jonathan Wilson). For someone who lives under a dictatorship like Brazil or Argentina in those years, it's probably not as simple to criticize the government as it is for foreigners outside the country, and if he considered doing so, Pelé must have worried about his family and friends in Brazil, as well as his sponsorships and playing contract. 

Nobody's perfect, and nobody makes the right decision in every case. Yet Pelé symbolized the joy of the jogo bonito, the beautiful game, and every football fan in the world from 1958 to the early 1980s knew who he was. Writing this post, I've had in my head that image of him being carried aloft after winning the 1970 World Cup. He was relatively old by then, 12 years on from his debut in the 1958 Sweden World Cup, but he'd just been part of a team that had dominated the tournament like no other. Even after coming out of retirement he was that good, and so, regardless of whether you think he was the greatest player, he was certainly the King, and we won't see someone like that again.

World Cup 2022: El GOAT

In the end, it could only be this. Messi, the past decade's candidate for greatest of all time, against Mbappé, the coming decade's candidate for greatest of all time. Messi scored once and helped create a second, and we thought that was that. Then, with ten minutes left in the game, Mbappé conjured a couple of pieces of magic to take the game to extra time. Messi scored again to win it, once and for all, but at the death Argentine nerves frayed and gave France a penalty, which Mbappé scored to take the game to penalties. And even the shootout was a thriller, as pretty much all of them have been this World Cup: France first (Mbappé, of course), then Argentina (Messi, of course), then two misses from France and three scores from Argentina...

And the cup's been won by a non-European team for the first time in 20 years. At the same time, we got a classic match, probably the first good final in... certainly as long as I've been watching football. And the first final-game hat-trick since 1966, scored by (who else?) Mbappé.

I had slightly mixed feelings going into this match, since both teams' talismanic players are employed by Paris St-Germain, which is owned by Qatar, which is, of course, the host. Whichever team won, it'd be a propaganda/soft power win for Qatar. At the same time, you could forget the background for a moment, the unhinged speeches and hollow justifications from various functionaries of the game, and just enjoy two teams playing really good football.

Did Qatar put on a good show? Yes, I think they did. The venues weren't exactly full, but it seems like things ran as they should. People had a good time, the venues were easy to reach and there weren't any instances of hooligan violence that I read or heard about (you assume the Guardian and whatever other outlets would cover it). This also might be unpopular to say, but I actually appreciate how Qatar stood up to FIFA and the sponsors and said that, no, you wouldn't be able to buy beer in the stadia after all.

Does any of that invalidate the abuses of workers that enabled this World Cup to take place? No, those worker deaths and the obfuscation and double-speak around them will remain a black mark on FIFA and the game in general. Other countries are culpable too, not least Russia, which bookended its hosting in 2018 with two separate attacks on Ukraine and has also passed law after law criminalizing the "promotion" of LGBTQ lifestyles. People have highlighted homophobic chanting in Mexico, and the overturning of Roe v Wade in the US, but none of those things invalidates the criticism of Qatar doing it, at least as long as reporters and NGOs note when other countries are doing bad stuff.

Some numbers

Turning briefly to the numbers, I've put the final touches on my spreadsheet looking at how the Western European teams have done against the rest of the world. In 2006, Western European teams took 2.59 points from their matches against the rest of the world, which remains the highest average this century (this counts penalty shootouts as draws, but games won in extra time are counted as regular wins or losses). For comparison, in 2022 they took 1.66 points per game against the rest of the world, which is actually the second lowest total, after 2002, which was also the last time a South American team won the tournament and the last time an African team went on a run past the round of 16.

That's for all Western European teams, so the likes of Wales or Belgium or Denmark, who didn't make it out of the group stage, are dragging the average down. If we look at the performance of the 5 big Western European countries - England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain - then they took 1.85 points per game against the rest of the world, which is actually the third-highest in this same period since 2002. The only tournaments where they did better were 2006, when Italy met France in the final, and 2018, when France won and England got to the semifinal.

What's impressive is that these numbers have been improving since the nadir of 2010, when they got 1.63 points per game, especially when you consider that in that period at least one of the big five has always failed to progress from the group stage. It's even more impressive when you consider that Italy hasn't even qualified for the last two World Cups. So really it's only four big teams posting these numbers, and getting better against the rest of the world since 2010. 

That seems to be a confirmation of Soccernomics's argument that the Western European football networks are helping the region dominate. They are home to the biggest, richest leagues, as well as France, which doesn't have an amazing league but which does create world class players who ply their trade in Spain and England, and less importantly in Italy and Germany (I say less importantly because the two biggest leagues are clearly the Premier League and the Primera Liga).

Colonialism vs multiculturalism

This point about the strength of the networks raises another point, about the makeup of these teams. I've seen a few people on social media talk about how these big Western European teams do well only because of colonialism. It's a persuasive argument, especially when you consider that certain French players were born in overseas departments, or have their ancestry from there. Those overseas departments may be officially part of France, but that's just colonialism too, since it means France hasn't let go of them in four or five centuries.

The other way of looking at it, though, is that these players of African or Caribbean or Middle Eastern descent demonstrate the strength of multiculturalism. French right-wing nationalists complain when the French team wins (seriously) because there are so many "black-blanc-beurre" players; at the same time, England's black players get horrific abuse on social media when they miss penalties, and also when their white colleagues miss penalties (Bukayo Saka got abused for England losing to France, even though Harry Kane missed the penalty that would have kept them in the game). But it's actually a good thing that these national teams are selecting the strongest players they can, regardless of skin color or how "French" or "English" or "German" their names are.

I think we can agree that the worst of both worlds would be for, say, France to maintain these overseas colonies, but to deny their residents, who pay French taxes, speak French and use the same currency as Metropolitan France, the opportunity to represent their country in football?

It gets more complicated when you consider the multiracial makeup of the other big Western European countries. Bukayo Saka is of Nigerian descent, but Nigeria isn't part of the United Kingdom, just of the Commonwealth. In contrast to other independent members of the Commonwealth, its currency doesn't have the English monarch (and I say that deliberately). Yet Saka was born in England and came up through its academy system, and represents his adopted country at the highest level. There are clearly colonial links, but as I say, it speaks to the willingness of the football authorities in England to look for talent outside of the traditional groups that provided players.

Most big Western European teams have opened up their selections to non-white players, both from former colonies and from immigrant populations. The big exception, however, is Italy. There have been a couple of notable exceptions, like Mario Balotelli and Moise Kean, but the first black player selected by the Italian national team was Fabio Liverani, hardly a household name, and he was only called up in 2001, long after France and England were well-integrated.

I don't think Italy's lack of multicultural players is the main or only reason why it's had so much trouble at the World Cup since 2006. It has, after all, reached two European Championship finals and won one of them, and has generally done much better at that level than in the World Cup. But Italian society is changing, with the aging of the society and the lack of opportunities driving young Italians abroad, while the country's position in the Mediterranean makes it the first port of call for many refugees and migrants. Saying that welcoming in these migrants will help in football may seem silly, but if that's the way to show Italians that people of color can benefit their society, then I think it's an avenue to explore.

Is Messi the GOAT?

I'm not even going to try to segue smoothly from that section to this, even though Lionel Messi is a migrant twice over: once when his Italian forebears came to Argentina and again when he moved to Spain to receive treatment for his hormone deficiency and to develop his footballing skills. 

But the question of whether Messi is the greatest of all time has been bandied about a lot this tournament, since it's probably his last. I don't know if winning this tournament cements that status for him, because he's associated more with his time at Barcelona, where he won everything he could possibly win and dominated Spanish football alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and Real Madrid. I wonder if winning this tournament, where he's no longer at the otherworldly heights he occupied in the previous decade, really puts him on the same level as Pele or Maradona or Zidane, who are (at least in my mind) associated more as World Cup all-time greats.

On the other hand, Messi is such a cultural force because of football that it would be odd if he'd only ever been a nearly-man footnote to the tournament, like George Best or Zlatan Ibrahimović or other great players who never won or like Best, even qualified. Winning this tournament doesn't necessarily make him the greatest player who ever lived, but it makes sure he's in the conversation.

These arguments apply to Cristiano Ronaldo, by the way. He's never won a World Cup, and now he never will, at least as a player, but he was just as much of a cultural force as Messi. You can appeal to numbers as much as you want: goals, goals per game, league titles, etc. Each has also won their regional tournament, but winning the 2022 World Cup certainly gives Messi a leg up on Ronaldo.

But what does it mean to be the greatest? Pele is the player most people think of, especially if they don't know anything else about football. He was involved in two World Cup wins, including when he came out of retirement in 1970 to play as part of possibly the greatest team the game has ever seen. Yet Ronaldo and Messi (and Neymar, and Ronaldo o fenomeno) have all surpassed certain of Pele's achievements, like international goals, appearances or career goals.

The point about everyone knowing about Pele points to another way of looking at this "greatest" debate, specifically influence. Pele became the face of football for decades, including the 1970s and 1980s' North American Soccer League, which was the previous big shot at selling soccer to American viewers before MLS. But I think the most influential player ever was Johan Cruyff, even despite (or because of) never winning the World Cup.

Cruyff became the game's biggest thinker, along with his manager Rinus Michels, and the two took the concept of Total Football from the Netherlands to Barcelona, from where it grew into the big tactical innovations in the game. This is all an abbreviated version, and to get the full picture of how tactics developed you should read Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson and Zonal Marking by Michael Cox. But the basic point is, without Cruyff you don't get Barcelona (the concept thereof), and without Barcelona you don't get Messi.

What's next?

What's immediately next is a return to the regular season, which was interrupted by this World Cup. It seems less important than these big national questions, but it will be interesting to see how the English Premier League develops now, especially since we'll see what happens with Erling Braut Haaland, possibly the world's best player of the moment who wasn't in Qatar. Will he help Manchester City win the Champions League, or will that prize continue to elude the Gulf petrostates' teams?

At the international level, next summer we'll have the Women's World Cup, where we'll see how the rest of the world has caught up to the US. The team of 2019 may not be at the same level as last time, so will they refresh or get overtaken by other, upcoming powers?

The year after that is Euro 2024, which remains my second favorite tournament. My hope is that Italy will do well again there, and that England's progress under Gareth Southgate will also continue. Having now seen Croatia reach its second World Cup semifinal in a row, I'm also curious how they and the rest of the Eastern European teams will develop. That will depend on how well they get integrated into the existing networks around the Big 5 leagues, of course.

And finally, World Cup 2026 will mark the tournament's return to North America, the first time it'll be held here since 1994 and, really, the beginning of the modern era of football and of the World Cup. It feels a little like over-egging the pudding to hold it in three countries, all of them large enough to host a tournament on their own, especially given how 2022 was effectively held in one city. But FIFA and the media's need for spectacle is insatiable, and holding it across the US, Mexico and Canada means bringing the show to a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise get to watch it. I, for one, would like to go to matches if I'm in the US.

Anyway, that's the end of this World Cup. It's been a problematic one, but in truth, aren't they all? Without discounting the human cost, in lives lost and in dictators propped up and in corruption enabled, the fact that the World Cup comes every four years like (almost) clockwork, is a way to take stock of my life and where I am. I watched my first World Cup final in 1994 on summer vacation in Italy, and I know where I was for every single tournament since. It's given me a lot of exciting moments, like Germany's 7-1 demolition of Brazil to Italy beating France on penalties in 2006 just a month after I'd moved back to London for my first job post-grad school.

It's my favorite sporting event, and I hope to enjoy it for a long time to come. I just hope it gets less shady, and I hope Italy comes back to it.